Yoko Ono

Poor Yoko. Born into an elite Japanese banking family and heiress to John Lennon's estate, rock's most famous widow seems to have tried everything under the sun to cope with the trappings of wealth: high-rent seclusion, mink coats, primal-scream therapy, tarot cards, waging peace from the comfort of bed, catching flies and releasing them, throwing dried peas at baffled audiences (urging them to give peas a chance?) while whipping her hair in "musical accompaniment." But, hey -- she's a conceptualist.

Related Content

• Deconstructing the Beatles: Scott Freiman on how "A Day in the Life" is like Frankenstein
  April 12, 2012
• "I buried Paul" and other Beatles blasts from the past, tonight at the Boedecker Theater
  May 17, 2012
• Another Clue for You All
  April 12, 2012
• Twenty fabled moments in Denver Music: #20: Beatlemania at Red Rocks in 1964
  May 21, 2012
• James McCartney toughs it out in Macca's shadow
  April 12, 2012

More About

• John Lennon
• The Beatles
• Courtney Love

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Still greeting dementia with open arms at 68, the Woman Who Broke Up the Beatles returns after five years of silence to shatter our collective nerves again -- pop style. Blueprint for a Sunrise offers precious little from the lotus flower of sweet laughter and squall. Like a one-woman karaoke machine, Ono drags herself through everything from lukewarm psychedelic balladry ("I Want You to Remember Me 'B'") to flamenco-flavored dirge ("Is This What We Do") to stuttering funk-hop with spoken Japanese verse ("It's Time for Action!"). More pretentious offerings include "Rising," a live avant-garde effort backed by son Sean and his band, IMA; it's nearly thirteen minutes' worth of hollow soapboxing, with Ono advising one and all to "Have courage/Have rage/We're all together" while getting jiggy with herself, hyperventilating and otherwise sounding like a birthing cow.

Still an acquired taste -- like head cheese or battery acid -- Ono should have stuck to swapping casserole recipes with Courtney Love. The intensity of her earlier sound poems (such as "Don't Worry Kyoko, Mummy's Only Looking for a Hand in the Snow," a memorial to the Tokyo bombings from 1969's Live Peace in Toronto) has only paved the way for today's disgruntled musings from a bored tourist in Jamaica ("I'm Not Getting Enough"). But what else would you expect from someone who used her voice training in opera to sing in a burlap bag?